


Something's gotta give

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Best Friends, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Depression, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explanations, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Betrayal, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25723513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Joe suddenly realized that he had sketched a portrait of Booker for three days in a row, all detailed in different expressions and poses, but all with an unfathomable sadness masked within his eyes and a tautness to his jovial expression like he forgot what it was like to laugh. Joe realized that he wasn’t sure what Booker looked like anymore. Couldn’t place the wrinkles around his eyes. Couldn’t recall the tilt of his lips, or the way his eyes looked in the sunlight, or the way his hair fell after a long night of anxiously running his hands through it.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 31
Kudos: 283





	Something's gotta give

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sockich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sockich/gifts).



> This was actually supposed to be an entirely different fic. Like, it was all dark and angsty and depressing, but then I read another fic (I don't remember the name, sorry) where Booker lives alone for a while and slowly starts to get happier and happier until the others come, and I just really wanted the others to understand why he did what he did because I still stand by the fact that Merrick was only supposed to have HIM. Anyway, this is not a great fic, and it gets worse as it goes along, but for what it's worth and how long it took me to do, I'm actually really happy with it. Also, the last scene is really good, but it's funny how we all ignore it or move it around or barely referencing it when writing the exile fics, you know?? Anyway, enough of my rambling, I hope you enjoy xx
> 
> This is for @Sockich who left such lovely comments on my last Booker & Joe fic that it made me feel proud enough of my abilities to write a second fic about them, so you're the only reason this fic ever happened haha. Thanks for your kindness x

Nothing ever goes the way they’re supposed to, anymore.

One hundred years exile was supposed to be simple. Supposed to be easy. Supposed to be a kindness compared to what it could have been. It could have been so much worse. But they loved him still, despite it all. He was family.

A year in, Joe suddenly realized that he had sketched a portrait of Booker for three days in a row, all detailed in different expressions and poses, but all with an unfathomable sadness masked within his eyes and a tautness to his jovial expression like he forgot what it was like to laugh. Joe realized that he wasn’t sure what Booker looked like anymore. Couldn’t place the wrinkles around his eyes. Couldn’t recall the tilt of his lips, or the way his eyes looked in the sunlight, or the way his hair fell after a long night of anxiously running his hands through it. He had filled up many sketchbooks since Booker had left them, and the one he carried with him now had no memory of his face, even the pictures he currently drew was as if his hands had forgotten the planes of his face, the kindness of his eyes, the hardness of his jaw, the wrinkles around his eyes.

He had never forgotten Andy’s face when they embarked on their occasional one year break. Maybe he had wanted to forget him and forgot him he did. Though it was supposed to be Booker, the man staring up at him from the page was unrecognizable.

It hit him all at once. An unbelievable, almost painful need to see him again, a yearning to memorise the hard lines and curves of his face again, the way his eyes crinkled up when he laughed, the way he gestured and got too riled up during a sporting event, and a hopeless desperation to just be in the same room as him and share a drink and listen to the sound of his laugh dragged all the way up from the depths of his soul and the way his fingers would wrap around the cool surface of a glass filed with deep coloured scotch as if they had never known any differently.

He brought it up to Nicky one late afternoon, laying in a tangle of each other’s limbs with setting sunlight streaming in from the wooden shutters in Cyprus, Nicky’s head on his chest and his fingers in his hair. “I miss Booker,” and the admission made something ache in his chest, the words that have gone unsaid for a whole year.

“I know,” Nicky had said gently. “I have been waiting for you to admit that for a very long time. I miss him too. I miss him every day.”

Joe settled back against the cushions, reaching over to pluck his sketchbook off the nightstand before returning to his place at Nicky’s side, fitting like a puzzle piece in the empty space. “I don’t know how to draw him anymore,” he flicked to the most recently used pages and showed Nicky the faces drawn with uncertain lines and uncertain features. Vague. Indistinct. Common. Boring. Plain. “I don’t know if I remember what he looks like.”

“In that case,” Nicky suggested kindly, tapping his fingers on Joe’s chest as he thought. “Maybe it’s time for you to pay our old friend a visit, then. Get reacquainted. Memorise him again. Make the pain hurt less. I think he’s long overdue for a visit.”

Frowning, Joe craned his head down to look at him, and Nicky tilted his face upwards to meet his eyes. “The one hundred years hasn’t ended yet. It’s barely even started.”

“If you want my opinion, _caro_ ,” Nicky said, his breath ghosting across his chest. “I think that we were harsh on him, back then. And that we knew, deep down, that none of us would last that long. Even you, who felt his betrayal… so severely.”

“We were kidnapped, tortured, cut into, and killed many times,” Joe said bitterly. “I’m surprised you’re not still mad.”

“Yes,” Nicky conceded. “But you must have at least wondered why, _si_? I often find myself wondering what pushed him to make that decision. I regret not hanging around long enough to ask him about it.”

“I suppose,” Joe sighed. “It wouldn’t hurt to pay him a… quick visit. See how he is. Make sure he’s taking care of himself.”

Nicky laughed, the action making Joe’s whole body vibrate and tremble with the motion. “I must tell you, _amore_ , that I have been waiting for you to come to that conclusion for about a year.”

Joe shifted so he could look down at the love of his life cradled in his arms, eyes filled with mirth and love, but something darker too, something sadder. “You didn’t think to mention it sooner instead of waiting for me to come up with it on my own?”

“I have known you for longer than I have loved you,” Nicky said. “And I know better than anyone that you are a stubborn man. You feel everything, the good and the bad, so strongly. Including Booker’s betrayal. I know that if I had tried to convince you, you would have laughed me off, told me how much he deserved it. But when you reach ideas on your own, you tend to follow through with them more often than if I mention then.”

“Ah, so you know what I’m going to do before I do now, huh? Always three steps ahead,” Joe joked, and Nicky hummed in affirmative. “What do you think I should do then?”

“I think you should see him,” Nicky said immediately, sounding like it had been something he’d wanted to say for a while. “On all our parts. Remember his face, remember his voice. Remember his kindness. Come back alone, or with company. Do whatever you need to do to alleviate this pain and then... we move on. As we always do. As we always have.”

“When did you get to be so wise?” Joe smiled, and Nicky’s laugh shook him. “I will leave for France in the morning. And you…”

He didn’t even need to finish the thought. “Will be exactly where you left me, here and waiting for you. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Joe took a flight to France and spent two days searching for the right location. He didn’t spend much time there, and the last time he’d had to speak the language, no matter how spotty, was when they encountered Booker two hundred years ago. The streets were the same, but the buildings were different, some re-opened and re-branded and some closed and torn down, but it was the same France with the same cobblestone streets, and Joe remembered the town Booker had lived in when he was a young man, and assumed he would be found in that location.

He had assumed he would find him in some run-down apartment building, or a dilapidated hostel or ruined shithole. Something that fit Booker’s personality of isolation and self-pity. Surprisingly, asking around with his slightly better but still poor French, the locals informed him that Booker no longer lived in the city, but a short walk from the main street and the greengrocers, and he followed the directions given to him by confused and harried passersby until he left the confines of the small French town.

To his surprise, Booker lived in a small, quaint cottage out in the middle of the woods, surrounded by nothing but trees for as far as the eye could see, the footpath leading to the front door a little rough and over-grown, but it was a nice home, small enough for one, and Joe found himself both surprised and pleased that Booker had such a place to call home.

Anxiety rose in his throat like bile as he knocked on the front door, the old wood rough under his hands, as he realized that he was seeing Booker for the first time in a year. There was no answer, and he tentatively jiggled the door nob, surprised to find it unlocked, and opened the front door to cross the threshold into Booker’s abode.

The interior of the house was oddly charming. There was a vase filled with wildflowers, decorated with twigs and thin branches and long leaves. It was only a one-person dwelling, with a two-person couch and two chairs at the small, round dining table, one of which was pushed in the corner with a stack of newspapers resting on it. There were only two other doors in the house- one that led to the only bathroom and the other that lead to his bedroom, bed unmade with clothes strewn across the floor.

There were no dirty dishes in the sink, but there were a couple of days worth of clean, slightly damp plates piled up in the dish rack. Stuck to the fridge door with magnets of various size and shape were photos of the Old Guard during missions that were recent enough for Joe to recall, some cut from newspapers and some printed in coloured ink and some seeming sent to him straight from the source, the photos glossy under his touch. On the kitchen bench, sat a bottle of whisky and a glass, wet on the inside, and very obviously used. Joe slowly entered, careful not to tread mud on the carpet, and looked around the room. He hadn’t known that Booker was such an interior decorator, but when you had nothing else to do with your time other than drink and sleep and fuck, you were bound to fill your life with whatever you could find. He lifted the bottle of whisky in his hands, turning it over to read the label, before rifling through the cabinets to search for a second glass. He caught sight of a packet of cigarettes near the sink, half-emptied, with an ashtray resting on the windowsill, and realized that the last time Booker had touched a cigarette was when they found him.

Joe didn’t have to wait long. He heard Booker before he saw him, the soft humming of a French song announcing his presence before Joe could see him, and he held his breath as the door was opened and Booker entered, beanie resting low over his eyes and an armful of wood clutched to his chest. 

He didn’t seem to notice Joe as he knelt on the ground and began to unload the wood, stacking it in a box in the corner, and Joe was given the opportunity to really look at him for the first time in a year without the benefit of Booker’s natural walls that were always up.

His beard was longer than he had ever seen it, dark and thick across his face. His eyes were tried, and he smelled of alcohol and smoke. He wore a plaid shirt rolled up to his elbows and a woollen vest that didn’t quite fit him, and an old pair of jeans that looked like they had seen some wear and tear and had been stitched together many times. He absently removed his beanie and his hair was long and greasy like it hadn’t been washed in too long a while, and it fell into his eyes in a way it never did before. He brushed it away impatiently, showing Joe the nails bitten down to the nubs and the new callouses on his dirty hands.

He looked everything like Joe remembered him, but not the same at all.

There was a sadness to him that was more palpable than ever before. Before, when it was just the four of them travelling the world and saving lives, he had been able to hide it behind a fake smile that was wide enough to be believable, laughter that was loud enough to drown out the sorrow and a glass full of bourbon or whisky or scotch or whatever he could get his hands on pressed against his lips. But Joe could see it now when he thought he was alone in this little cabin in the woods, and he was surprised and somewhat heart-broken that he hadn’t seen it before. Or, maybe he had seen it, and just didn’t want to acknowledge it for fear of realizing that his brother was broken beyond repair.

When he had been standing there for maybe longer than was necessary, just watching Booker stack chopped wood in the crate and trying to remember the lines of his face without his walls up, he reached out and poured himself a drink, the gurgling of the liquid into the glass breaking the silence.

Quick as a whip, swift as always, Booker spun on his knees to face him, reaching for the gun on his lip that was no longer there, that hadn’t been there for about a year, a snarl on his lips and a fury in his gaze. It all faded away once he really took a look at the intruder and recognized Joe, and he slowly rose to his feet, looking equal parts horrified and surprised. “J-Joe?”

“Hello, Booker,” Joe busied himself with taking a sip from his glass so he didn’t have to see the pained look in his eyes. “This is a lovely home you have here. Quaint, almost. I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you’d be living in some run-down, dilapidated apartment in the middle of town.”

“I did for a couple of months, but then the building was condemned, and burned down three days after I moved out,” Booker’s voice was strained. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you, of course,” Joe said it like it was obvious. He waved at the glasses on the bench. “Care to have a drink with me? Though I’m sure you’ve done plenty of drinking on your own during this time. I'm glad to see you haven't drunk yourself to death."

"That only happened twice," Booker said haltingly

Pursing his lips, Joe decided not to comment, "Here, let me top you up. Just this once I could enable you.”

“No, Joe, ” Booker looked tense like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Joe should have known that Booker would get straight to the point. He never was very patient and a year of loneliness was sure to make anyone suspicious. He couldn’t blame him, really. The way they left off, Joe was the last person who would _ever_ make the trip to see him, and alone no less. “I’ve come to see you, so I can remember the lines of your face and the way your eyes lit up when you smile, and to give you a chance to explain to me why you did what you did.”

There was a silent pause as Booker let out a trembling breath before he shuffled forward to lean against the counter, as far as he could from Joe while still being in the same room. “I uh, I think I will have that drink, now.” Joe obliged, and filled Booker’s glass. He wrapped his hands around it tighter than was necessary, and Joe suspected that it was to stop him from reaching out. “Are you alone?”

“Just me,” Joe said. “Everyone else was too busy. Well, to be fair, nobody but Nicky even knows where I am, so they might have come. I didn’t invite them, though.”

“How is everyone?” Booker’s voice sounded weak like he was bowing in submission to someone much larger, much scarier and much more powerful than him. But that wasn’t true. Joe knew that even drunk off his ass and sleep-deprived, Booker was a brutal, capable fighter.

“They’re alright. We’ve currently stopped off in Cyprus, and Nicky has been trying the local fruits and spices. They eat watermelon by the pound there, and all of it is freshly picked. Andy has been teaching Nile how to fight with a real warrior,” he laughed. “Apparently, guns and skill are not enough. We have been trying to figure out what weapon to give her, from our time, so she doesn’t have to rely on guns alone. It has been… a process. She doesn’t have any opinions on the matter, since she has never had the need for one, and the rest of us are… undecided.”

“If that’s the case, I’ve got a pretty good cavalry sabre she can have that haven’t been used in about two hundred years,” Booker managed.

“Hm,” Joe watched him carefully, keeping his expression hidden behind his glass. Booker had his head down, focused on his shoes and the countertop and the liquid in his glass instead of on Joe’s face, and it was a testament to how long it had been since they had last seen each other, considering Booker’s hair was now long enough to hide his eyes. “We miss you, you know. We all do.”

Booker’s whole body tensed as if Joe had just sent a bolt of electricity through his very soul. “Why?” he bit out. “After everything that happened? After everything I did?”

“Of course we miss you, Book. You’re family and no matter what happens, no matter what you do, no matter how long we’re separated, we’ll always be family,” Joe couldn’t even believe what he was hearing. “Where has this come from? I thought that you knew we would always love you, that we would always be family. We are all we have. That will never change.”

Head down, eyes on his glass, Booker started shaking. Joe didn’t mention it, but Booker’s fist was clenched around his glass so tight that his knuckles had gone white, and every hair on his head trembled as he tried to hold back the amount of emotion that bubbled up inside him. “Ah,” he managed. “But you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“Well, I suppose, put simply, it’s because _I_ miss my brother,” Joe said. “And I’m willing to give you an opportunity to explain yourself, and a chance to come home.”

That was the final nail in the coffin.

It was like a dam had finally broken after too many years of being ignored, unnoticed, untended, and Joe watched as Booker pushed himself away from the counter so hard that he stumbled backwards before he sunk to his knees in the middle of the room and sobbed into his hands, short, aborted sounds that he tried to trap in his throat even as the tears poured through the small gaps between his fingers. Joe had never been a heartless man, even during those moments when he had tried to be, and the moment he watched Booker collapse into a weeping, trembling heap on the floor he gave up all pretence of being distant and uneasy and dropped to his knees in front of him, holding him to his chest and running his hands through his greasy hair. “ _Je suis désolé_ ,” Booker was saying in muttered french, and Joe wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, everything and nothing all at once. “ _Je suis vraiment désolé_ ,”

“Oh Booker,” Joe tried to soothe, not worrying about how long it must have been since he washed his dirty hair, or how he stunk of musky smoke and heavy alcohol, or how his tears were soaking into Joe’s shirt. All he could think about was that this was the first time in over two hundred years that Joe had ever seen him cry, much less _weep_ and that they certainly had done a great disservice to their friend. “Oh, _Book_.” 

“It was never supposed to be you,” Booker’s words were muffled by his shirt, but despite straining to hear him, Joe refused to pull away. “It wasn’t supposed to be you, or Nicky, or Andy, or-”

“Who was it then, if not for us?” Joe interrupted before the thought could go any further. He didn’t want to think about that day any more than he had to.

“ _Me_. Only _me_ ,” Booker was still crying, but his voice was stronger now, sure, as if he needed Joe to understand every word like he needed air to breathe. “I never wanted any of you to get wrapped up in any of Merrick’s bullshit, it was only supposed to be _me_.”

“I don’t understand, _fratello_ ,” Joe cupped the back of Booker’s head. “What the fuck were you going to do?”

“Leave you,” the honesty was heartbreaking, and Joe felt his heart skip a beat, his breath pause in his chest. “Copley needed the footage. He needed proof for Merrick, and when they agreed to go through with the testing, I was just going to leave you behind and hope that you forgot me. You were never supposed to get involved,” a bitter chuckle, thick and wet. “I should have learnt by now that nothing goes according to plan with us.”

“Booker,” Joe said sadly, but he wasn’t given a chance to continue.

“But then Nile came, and Merrick’s men broke into the church without warning and took you and Nicky while they left me behind, and all I could think about was getting you guys back,” Booker sounded like he was on the verge of screaming, hands fisted in Joe’s shirt, forehead digging into his stomach. “That was never the plan. They were never supposed to take you. But Merrick got greedy, and he wanted all of us or none of us,” he shook his head, and Joe fisted his hands in his hair. “If I had known that sooner, I would have told Copley to go fuck himself and that the deal was off. It was only supposed to be _me_.”

This time, Joe lowered himself to his haunches so he was at an even height with Booker instead of being a head and a half above him, and grabbed his face in his hands, tilting it upwards so he could meet his eyes. His cheeks were red and tearstained, his eyes bloodshot and haunted, and this close, Joe realized just how poorly this year of isolation had been for his health. “But why? Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you give yourself up to them like that?”

When Booker was unable to avoid Joe’s gaze, unable to pull away from the rough hands collapsed on the slides of his face, his entire being seemed to deflate. “Andy has been weary of this life for a very long time, and I thought that if there was an option I could give her to speed up that process, I would do anything and everything I could. And you and Nicky, you do not regret living, have never had the need to, yet I know your greatest fear is one of you dying without the other. I wanted to give you the chance to be together in life and in death, forever and always. It was never supposed to hurt you. It was supposed to give you all some assurance that you could end it at any moment. I wanted to give you a piece of certainty in our uncertain lives.”

“And you?” Joe demanded, pushing Booker’s hair out of his face and tucking it behind his ears. It was long enough to do so now, and Joe was reminded again how unfamiliar Booker was to him after a year away. “Why would you sacrifice yourself like that? What did you gain from it?”

For the first time, Booker met his eyes, and Joe felt the blood in his veins run cold. “I have wanted to die since the moment I was born, Yusuf. I watched the people I loved more than life die painful deaths and curse me on their way. You and Nicky have always had each other, and Andy mourns for a woman she has not lost, and I am stuck somewhere in the middle. I dream every night of a drowning woman, beating the metal until she bleeds and drowning and waking until she goes insane. I live my days like it will be the last, hoping and praying that it will be. I wanted- _needed_ \- Merrick to conduct tests on me, because if he could find out why we never die, maybe he could finally find a way for us to control it.”

There were so many things that Booker just wasn’t saying, but Joe didn’t need him too. What he had heard already pained him to his very core, and he wanted to hold Booker to his chest and never let him go. “And what about us, you fool? You didn’t think we would miss you? You didn’t think we would search to the ends of the earth if you went missing, or mourn you if you died? What did you think was going to happen?”

“I had assumed you would forget about me and move on,” Booker admitted, and he sounded like the idea was obvious and that Joe was the insane one. He averted his eyes and Joe had no choice but to let him go and sit back as he tried to make sense of the situation.

“I think all that drink must have finally gone to your head,” Joe tried for a joke, and a small smile curled at the corners of Booker's lips as he looked away to wipe away the tears. “You honestly thought that we would just forget about you? Quynh has been drowning on the bottom of the sea for five hundred years and we think about her every single day. You’ve only been gone for a year and not a day goes by where I don’t find myself wondering how you are. How could you possibly think that you mean less to us than any of the others?”

Booker sat back, legs splayed in front of him, resting his weight on his arm. He was eyeing the bottle on the counter, and Joe wondered if this was the longest he had gone without a drink. “I have always been a weak man, Joe,” he said instead of answering. “Selfish. I stayed with my family when I should have left them because I couldn’t bear to be alone. And for that, I caused them pain and I’ve been drowning in grief and sorrow for hundreds of years. I could not fight for Neapolitan. I could not bring myself to die on the front lines in Russia. I am… expendable. Unnecessary. Useless. Disposable. I am nothing but a burden. I would hope and expect you all to forget me. I honestly thought you would have already, considering how we left off on that beach.”

“Alright, listen,” Joe managed, sliding closer to place a hand on Booker’s knee. “I didn’t understand before. I thought you had given us up and sacrificed us to be lab rats. I thought that you had broken our trust and ruined us on purpose. But even then, on that beach, I knew that there was something more too it, something that made you change so quickly, something to make you betray us like that. I hadn’t wanted to think about it then. I was so _angry_ with you that I just wanted to punish you and be done with it. But I understand a bit more, now, and I know that you are just a sad, lonely man who needed help at his lowest point and made bad decisions in a poor attempt to lessen some of your pain.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Booker muttered, but Joe held up a hand to silence him. “Joe-”

“Let me speak, Booker. For the love of God,” Joe said, and Booker fell back on his elbow with a sigh. “I believe that part of my anger was directed back at myself for not realizing you were hurting so dearly until it was too late. Or maybe I did, and just didn’t feel that it was necessary to interfere. I was a fool. I let my anger, at you and at myself, get in the way of seeing your point of view. And I’m sorry about that.” Booker was silent, and it was all Joe could do to watch him and savour this rare moment of quiet. “We have always known that you more than most have bared these last few centuries like a burden. You do not do well with loneliness, despite living and breathing it every day. We knew that, and yet we still sentenced you to a hundred years of it. It was cruel of us, but that's what happens when we let our anger get the best of us. Hopefully, we will not make the same mistakes again. You will always be our family, and you will always have a home with us.”

Booker looked up at him then, and his eyes betrayed the emotions he was trying desperately to keep hidden. Hope. Optimism. Desperation. Disbelief. Joe could hardly recognise the man sitting before him, still covered in tears and reeking of stale alcohol, but there was no doubt in his mind that this was entirely, unquestionably, Booker. “What are you saying…?”

“What I’m saying, Sebastien,” Joe said, voice low and calm and gentle. “Is that you can come home. If you want. If you need. One hundred years was too cruel, even for us. You have a family waiting for you if you still want it.”

Letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, Booker felt his whole body tremble as the weight of Joe’s words really rested heavily on his shoulders. “Do you really mean it?”

“More than anything,” Joe said. “And I can’t really speak for the others, but I have half a mind to say that they would agree with me. Everyone. Even Nicky. They all forgave you a long time ago. I suppose they were just waiting for me to reach the same conclusion.”

Booker averted his gaze focusing on his shoes instead of the kindness on Joe’s face. He hadn’t seen kindness like that directed at him in over a year. “Well then, I uh…” he cleared his throat when his voice cracked. “I’d like that.”

“You don’t have to come straight away, of course,” Joe said, waving a hand around the house as he stood from the ground. “I see you’ve made yourself a home here. Which I’m very proud of, by the way. You can have time to pack your stuff, or whatever you have. Mostly books and alcohol, I assume,” Booker smiled that smile that Joe missed, but also told him he was right. “And then you can meet us. We’ll be waiting. It was nice to see you again, Book.”

“Wait-” Booker said as Joe made for the door. He paused as if regretting speaking at all before he carried on haltingly. “It’s late. You should sleep here for the night before making your way back to Cyprus in the morning.”

Smiling, Joe turned back to Booker, still splayed out on the floor, and rubbed his hands together. “That would be lovely. I hate navigating French streets at night- they all look the same. Do you get cable in this place or what?”

They spent the rest of the night on the couch watching the football games, smushed together on Booker’s little two-seater, afraid to get too close to each other but desperate to touch, as Booker slowly made his way through the bottle of whisky they had left on the counter and Joe added new drawings of him to his sketchbook. He spent the entire night with charcoal between his fingers as he sprouted insults to Booker’s team and drew his face enough times to fill up a whole sketchbook. Smiling with the slight tilt to his lips, laughing so hard that he threw his head back against the couch and made the corners of his eyes crinkle up, rolling his eyes with an upturned nose, the peaceful moments when he thought nobody was watching, the easy way he talked to Joe about the goings-on in town during the commercial breaks.

When darkness fell and Booker had fallen asleep on the couch, the bottle of whisky falling from his fingers to land dully on the carpet, Joe stayed up to sketch him in the rare, peaceful moment of tranquillity and ease, a moment where Booker felt safe enough to let all his guards down, and he sketched him long enough to ensure he would never forget the planes of his face or the angles and curves of his expression again.

Before Joe stepped out the door the next morning, Booker brought him into a hug tight enough to break bones but also somehow hesitant, like he wasn’t sure if he were allowed to hug Joe or not. Joe broke that thought by placing a kiss to his temple, pushing his hand through his hair, admiring the new length of his beard, caressing a hand down his cheeks, holding him tight and securely to his chest for as long as he needed until Booker made the ultimate decision to reluctantly pull away. “Cut your hair,” he said kindly on his way out the door. “And maybe have a shower between now and the next time we see you.”

Laughing that familiar laugh that Joe had missed so much, Booker riffled through his cabinets, “There are not many people to impress out here in the middle of nowhere,” he said before he palmed Joe a long, plain-looking wooden box wrapped with ribbon and decorated with hand-made carvings, Nile’s name scratched onto the lid. “My sabre,” he explained as Joe raised a questioning eyebrow. “For Nile. Make sure she practices. I expect her to be more adept at it than me the next time I see her.”

“Will do,” Joe said. “Until next time, _fratello_ ,”

 _“Yu me manques tous les jours_ _,_ ” Booker said as the door closed between him and Joe. “ _Et j'ai hâte de vous revoir tous.”_

On the train ride, Joe pulled Booker's- _Nile’s_ sabre from his bag and opened the box, admiring the worn yet still sharp blade, the faded metal hilt where Booker’s hands had gripped, the ornate and beautiful yet eerily deadly design of the old french weapon, and couldn’t imagine Booker ever wilding something like this, but knowing that Nile would love it. 

He flicked through his sketchbook, taking his time as he reacquainted himself with the sight of Booker’s face, the same man from two hundred years but so different than a year ago, and vowed to never forget him ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:  
> caro= dear (Italian)  
> si?= yes? (Italian)  
> amore= love (Italian)  
> Je suis désolé= I'm sorry/ Je suis vraiment désolé= I'm so sorry (French)  
> fratello= brother (Italian)  
> Yu me manques tous les jours= I miss you every day (French)  
> Et j'ai hâte de vous revoir tous= and I cannot wait to see you all again (French)


End file.
